Review Summary

Many of the elements in this picture about an Irish family living in New York — picturesque poverty, an angelic, doomed black man, a dead child, a pair of cute, precocious daughters, a risky pregnancy toward the end — seem to promise a sticky bath of shameless sentimentality. But instead, thanks to Jim Sheridan's graceful, scrupulously sincere direction and the dry intelligence of his cast, "In America" is likely to pierce the defenses of all but the most dogmatically cynical viewers. The film, which Mr. Sheridan wrote with two of his daughters, is unabashedly personal, but he is too modest a filmmaker to turn his own experience into a lesson or a parable. From moment to moment, as it follows Johnny and Sarah Sullivan (Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton, both quietly terrific) through their daily struggles, the story feels small, almost anecdotal. But just as its tactful realism is adorned with a dusting of magic, its unassuming clarity hides an unexpected grandeur. It is the kind of movie that keeps growing in your mind long after you ve seen it, and its characters are so radiantly particular that they come, after a while, to seem like people you know. — A. O. Scott